IndieBiz - Marketing Indie (Games!)

There are some nice insights around marketing indie on a website called Tales of the Rampant Coyote: Adventures in Indie Gaming today, and the author has a few more going up tomorrow or soon. The author is Jay Barnson who founded and runs indie game company Rampant Games and has been “creating both indie games and top-shelf “AAA” retail games for over a decade.” The advice is directed at game developers, but applies fully and actually to pretty much any indie art or business you’re going to try and put out there, especially Tip 1:

Tip #1 - Take Responsibility

First of all, you need to understand that nobody cares about your game but you. Portals - as a business - only care AFTER it makes them money, even if their tech guys love playing it in the back room. Your poor game is unloved, un-promoted, and is going to languish in obscurity unless YOU, personally, do something about it. It is not the field of dreams.

This can be hard. You probably became an indie because you love making games, to the exclusion of all that business-y stuff. But, if you want your company to succeed even as a part-time business, you are going to have to dive in and work the full system. The game might be the heart of what you do, but the heart cannot survive without the other organs.

Now, you may end up with a publisher who is handling your marketing. In fact, they may have language in their contract preventing you from promoting the game yourself. If so - keep an eye on what they are doing. And spend the time instead promoting your own company. Because you want to be something more than a one-hit wonder.

Be in it for the long haul. Just because the retail sales model has evolved to have shelf-lives measurable in double-digit days doesn’t mean this is how you should operate. Indie games tend to have longer legs and slower burn.

Finally - in all that you do - MEASURE, TRACK, and KEEP RECORDS. How will you know whether an advertising campaign is working or not if you aren’t tracking daily sales, website hits, and downloads. (As an aside - check out Google Analytics for helping monitor online traffic).
From Rampant Games.